This chapter covers using the selection, lasso, and subselection tools to select and modify the elements in Flash Professional CS5. You also learn about using the Property inspector and other panels to modify elements’ attributes.

One way to modify graphics in Adobe Flash Professional CS5 is to select one or more shapes and edit them by changing their
attributes (such as color, size, and location) in the Property inspector or in other appropriate panels.

You can also modify the path that creates the shape of an element. Some operations—such as straightening lines, adjusting
Bézier curves, and assigning new attributes—require that the element be selected. Others, such as reshaping a line segment
or curve with the selection tool, require the element to be deselected. A few operations let you edit the element whether
it’s selected or not—using the paint-bucket tool to change a fill color, for example.

This chapter covers using the selection, lasso, and subselection tools to select and modify the elements you learned to make
in Chapter 2. You also learn about using the Property inspector and other panels to modify elements’ attributes.

Setting Selection Preferences

There are two basic ways to make a selection in Flash: one is to click an element directly, and the other is to enclose all
or part of an element with a selection outline. You can set preferences to gain more control over these two methods. For the
click method, you choose whether you must Shift-click to select multiple items or whether you can merely click additional
items to add to a selection. For the selection-outline method, you decide if the outline must fully enclose a graphic-object
to select it or if enclosing any part of a graphic-object selects the whole thing.

To set selection methods for the selection tools:

From the Flash menu (Mac) or the Edit menu (Windows), choose Preferences.

Shift Select. In Shift Select mode (Flash’s default setting), you must Shift-click to add items to the current selection. With Shift Select
turned off, each new item you click with the selection tool is added to the current selection.

Contact-Sensitive Selection and Lasso Tools. With Contact-Sensitive Selection on (the default), when a selection outline touches a graphic-object or text field, a grouped
shape, or a symbol instance, Flash selects the whole thing. When Contact-Sensitive Selection is off, the selection outline
must fully enclose the item to select it. This setting has no effect on merge-shapes.